Missoula Notebook

I’m proud of how relatively little I contribute to “the economy.” Sure, I’m driving an eleven-year-old car, carefully planning my first new-shoe purchase in five years, and squinting at a non-digital, non-HD television, but it’s hard to imagine how I could be much happier.

A lot of the credit goes to just living in Missoula, and I’m not alone in feeling this way. A recent survey found 94 percent of Missoulians “satisfied with the overall quality of life in Missoula.” Even among these sunny folks, I’m an outlier, because 64 percent of them said they were unhappy with traffic congestion here, and the relative ease of getting around this town compared to the Baltimore area is something Amy and I still marvel at, two years into our Missoula residency.

What am I going through? Coughing, fatigue, some nausea, achy joints, headaches and thirst. Not enough to keep me from work. In fact, I’m writing this having just completed laying out the ads for next week’s edition of the Sanpete Messenger.  However, I’d be lying if I said I wouldn’t rather be home in bed.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

“You got to caaaaarve that punkin, you gotta caaaaaarve that punkin…” I’m belting out these words to the tune of Southern Culture on the Skids’ “Carve That Possum” when the kids get off the school bus. Their friends, doing their best Kilroy-Was-Here impression, watch me from the bus windows as it pulls away.

“Dad, you’re embarrassing me,” says Speaker, stamping a foot. At 11 years of age, she is highly susceptible to mortification. Rusty remains stoic.

“Sorry, kiddo. I’m just full of…Halloween cheer!” I whip a ten-inch chef’s knife out of my coat. “Do you know what night this is?”

Rusty gives me his best baleful stare. “Goat sacrifice?”

“No, but close. It’s pumpkin carving night! I’ve already picked out some pumpkins for you guys.”

From the Panhandle with Cate Huisman

The fourth annual Lakedance Film Festival moves a little later into the fall this year, enabling it to kick off on Halloween night with four horror films: In addition to the classics “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Night of the Living Dead,” two short films entered in the festival will be included, including “FM,” a locally produced film involving blood-curdling screams interrupting music being played on the radio.

Father-and-son team Fred and Trevor Greenfield started this festival in 2006, with the hope of encouraging a nascent film-making industry in Idaho. In 2008, with the support of local banks, it started a grant program to support filmmakers in north Idaho. From just three north Idaho films in 2006, the festival had grown to include 13 north Idaho films by 2008.

Bob Wire Has a Point (It's Under His Cowboy Hat)

The U.S. Attorney General’s recent recommendation for federal prosecutors to lighten up on medical marijuana users and distributors has launched a cottage industry of media reviewers for marijuana dispensaries. Denver’s hipster weekly, Westword, has received over 120 applications for the position, a couple of them actually written in tiny script on a Zig Zag paper.

I could smell an opportunity for a journalist of my, uh, diverse background so I flew to Salt Lake City and got an audience with the city editor of the Deseret News, to persuade him that their paper needed a weed writer. The following interview was recorded with an iPod I had hidden in my Utah Jazz hoodie. Or maybe it was all a fever dream.

internet technology

In the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also known as the stimulus package, Congress appropriated $7.2 billion for broadband grants, loans, and loan guarantees to be administered by the USDA’s Rural Utilities Service (RUS) and the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA). The deadline for submissions was August of this year.

Now, the applications from each state are posted, and in a number of Intermountain West states, the Governors have already taken the next step of reviewing and prioritizing the projects, and made their recommendations public.

A new DNA test on remains found in a makeshift grave near Comb Ridge has disproved the possibility they belong to a famous young wanderer who vanished in Southern Utah in the thirties, according to a story by Paul Foy of the Associated Press.

Missoula Notebook

Things have gotten so bad that the White House today declared a nationwide state of emergency and advised that it would be “taking unprecedented steps to counter the emerging pandemic,” but of course this only raises new worries. With emergency powers, will the administration even need to await Congressional approval before empaneling tribunals to decide who’s too sick to be saved?

After all, while reports of President Obama’s “civilian national security force” roving the streets at night in FEMA vans—clad in clown masks and HAZMAT suits and urging flu sufferers to surrender “so we can take care of you”—are as yet unsubstantiated, perhaps it’s only a matter of time.

From the Panhandle with Cate Huisman

Sandpoint native daughter Emma Millar gained a new national title and barely missed defending a second one at this past weekend’s Collegiate Mountain Bike National Championships at Northstar at Tahoe in Truckee, California.

Emma, a junior at Fort Lewis College, captured the four-cross championship after easily winning all her heats but then falling behind in the final. Four-cross is an event not for the faint of heart in which four riders compete on the same course at the same time. She captured the title by pulling to the inside of a steep, sharp switchback in a move that gave new gray hairs to her proud parents, Karen and Alan Millar, who had traveled from Sandpoint for a weekend of torture by observation.

Missoula Notebook

Now that I’m the father of what a popular local bumper sticker calls a “Native Montanan,” I’m under even more pressure to learn some basic Montana skills, if only so that I don’t embarrass the poor guy in front of his friends later on.

I’m doing all right so far. Two years into my Montana residency, I’ve already achieved journeyman status at standing next to my grill with a can of Pabst in my hand, floating down the Blackfoot on an inner tube, and reacting to every new City Council resolution by exclaiming “this is Big Brother government at its worst!” But those skills will only carry me so far. To approach true Montananness, what I really need to do is get better at killing things in the woods.